<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Unfortunately lately I have been dealing with a lot of people looking down on me or judging for making my college decision this month. I was accepted into a handful of schools among them a high ranked liberal arts college, NYU, and an honors program at a public college. For some reasons, I decided to attend the honors program at a public college, one reason being I would be in my favorite and home city NYC where I would be able to fulfill one of my goals of having a career in museum education already being an intern at one during high school with further volunteering and interning at museums, stay with my family and have personalized attention and honors classes and enjoy city life. The decision was extremely difficult but I really really dislike how people have become either outraged, disappointed or condescending towards me for going to the public college, except for my best friends. It really hurts me alot all this treatment making me feel like nothing. Any advice for how to deal with this?
P.S. I plan to transfer to another college after 1 year, maybe Barnard</p>
<p>If they say anything negative, explain the cost savings, opportunities that NYC presents for a potential museum curator, or any other awesome tidbit about your school. You could also just shrug and agree that you are in fact ruining your life by choosing the same public system that educated a huge number of noble prize winners, extremely influential intellectuals, and well known political figures over a school that nearly went bankrupt in the 70s. </p>
<p>Ignore these ill-informed people, and congrats on a wise choice!</p>
<p>Thank you jym626 and whenhen! It’s nice to hear kind words from you both.</p>
<p>You need to do what makes sense for YOUR life and makes YOU happy. The older you become you will realize this. It is hard to hear others say negative things about your choices but you need to put yourself above that. It sounds like you made the right choice.</p>
<p>I assume you got into Macaulay. Explain that you got into an elite program that recruits only a handful of students and provides them with the best opportunities (list them and don’t forget the perks), all of that for free. So you’re getting a free ride to one great program in NYC and for grad school you’ll be able to attend any Ivy from it, when you graduate debt-free. Macaulay students’ average SAT and GPA are on par with Top 20 colleges (SAT above 1400/1600, so above 2% nation-wide). So it’s not like you’re choosing just the public college, and you’re not only choosing that college’s honors college: you’re choosing a program for winners of a city-wide academic competition. Then if that’s not enough for “prestige snobs”, detail the benefits for your career.</p>
<p>Don’t speak about transferring: first, because it sounds like you don’t REALLY like your choice since you’re already planning on leaving.
Second, because transferring is not that easy and if you need financial aid you may not be able to, since transfers don’t get the same financial aid as freshmen.
So don’t set wrong expectations.</p>